Sport: Scandal, Gender and the Nation Professor David Rowe University of Western Sydney
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ICS Occasional Paper Series Volume 4, Number 3 http://doi.org/10.4225/35/57a96b01f7e8f Sport: Scandal, Gender and the Nation Professor David Rowe University of Western Sydney November 2013 Editors: Professor David Rowe and Dr Reena Dobson Assistant Editor: Dr Michelle Kelly Publisher: Institute for Culture and Society University of Western Sydney Locked Bag 1797, Penrith NSW 2790, Australia Tel: +61 2 9685 9600 Fax: +61 2 9685 9610 Email: [email protected] Web: www.uws.edu.au/ics Sport: Scandal, Gender and the Nation1 David Rowe Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney Abstract Sport generates and attracts intensive media and public attention, including through highly- charged scandals, because it is a social institution characterised by a deep contradiction between its noble mythologies (most conspicuously evident in the philosophy of Olympism) and some of its more ignoble practices. Sport is also routinely treated as integral to national identity. For example, Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond, the official information booklet for the citizenship test, states that “[t]hroughout our history, sport has both characterised the Australian people and united us” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013: 43). If this proposition is accepted, a crisis of sport is also a crisis of Australian national identity. This occasional paper addresses and analyses the sport–nation nexus, paying particular regard to two issues: the relationship between sport, gender and citizenship in view of the male domination of Australian sport; and the meaning of sport-based national identity in an increasingly demographically and culturally diverse Australia where identification with the nation through sport cannot be automatically assumed, and may be problematic. Discussion of these subjects seeks to encourage sociologically informed public debate on one of Australia’s most cherished and flawed social institutions. Keywords: Sport, nation, citizenship, culture, gender, scandal Introduction: Birth of the sporting nation In 2004, the Summer Olympics took place in Greece for the first time since 1896, when their chief revivalist, the French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin, ‘brought the Games home’ after an extended hiatus. Banned as a pagan ritual by Christian Emperor Theodosius in AD393 (Horne and Whannel, 2012: 67), there had been a cool millennium and a half between races. The Opening Ceremony of Athens 2004 made much of the Ancient Games at Olympia as the spiritual birthplace of sport, but this twenty-first century instance of combining the professional and the Olympic as “prolympism” (Donnelly, 1996) had little in common with what took place between Greek city-states in antiquity. In the intervening period, the reward system for Olympic and other athletes had radically changed. Although the Ancient Games were never strictly amateur, and most sportspeople today do not make a handsome living, it might be observed that the contemporary event had substituted Mammon for Zeus as its honoured god in creating this multi-billion dollar 1 This paper was originally delivered as a TASA (The Australian Sociological Association) Annual Lecture at Parramatta Town Hall on 12 September, 2013. Institute for Culture and Society Occasional Paper 4.3 David Rowe (2013) ‘Sport: Scandal, Gender and the Nation’ 1 spectacle. A critical component of the economic infrastructure of contemporary sport is the media, which funds and popularises it with extraordinary synergistic efficiency (Boyle and Haynes, 2009; Wenner, 1998) through the workings of what I call the “media sports cultural complex” (Rowe, 2004). The media have turned sport events like the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup into global phenomena, but they have done so through the pivotal mobilisation of competitive nationalism (Rowe, 2011a). Before it became international sport had to become national, and national public and commercial media, in tandem with emergent sport governing bodies, played a key role in turning folk play into nationally organised competitive sport. Although major contemporary sports such as association football (soccer) and basketball constantly assert their global reach, their prime league products, such as the English Premier League and the (US) National Basketball Association, retain deep roots within individual nations. It is this sport–nation–culture nexus that is the principal focus of this paper. In short, what we today call sport – regular, rationalised physical play – is a social institution that is the product of modernity and of interaction with other major institutions of modernity, especially the capitalist economic apparatus, organised media and the nation state itself. Sport is a remarkable example of cultural diffusion – although out of the British Isles rather than the Western Peloponnese – but it is always manifest in particular contexts. The context in question for my purpose here is Australia – a country widely held to have a special affinity with sport and promoted as such by its own national government. Sport and the ‘nationing’ of Australia It is not difficult to find official declarations of the elevated place of sport in Australian national culture. For example, the ‘Society and Culture’ section of the glossy Australia in Brief document produced by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2012: 45, 47) declares unequivocally that: Australians love sport. Australia is the only nation besides Greece to have competed at every modern summer Olympic Games. Almost 70 per cent of Australians take part in some sort of physical activity at least once a week. Australia has over 120 national sporting organisations and thousands of local, regional and state sports bodies. Community-based sport across the nation underpins Australia’s remarkable sporting achievements at the elite level where we have produced many international champions across a diverse spectrum of sport. The nation unites when Australians succeed on the international stage. Sport is a powerful force in creating social harmony in a nation made up of people from so many different countries. Sport is officially held to be so important to Australian national culture that its most important events are protected for free-to-air television by the world’s most stringent anti- siphoning regime (Rowe, 2014). These are deemed to be “events of national importance and cultural significance” under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (as amended) – and they are all sports events – because “[t]he popularity and prominence of sports broadcasting can be seen as a natural extension of the place of sport in Australian society and culture” (Australian Government, Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, 2010: 9). Institute for Culture and Society Occasional Paper 4.3 David Rowe (2013) ‘Sport: Scandal, Gender and the Nation’ 2 Perhaps the most explicit official articulation of sport to ‘Australianness’ is found in Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond, the official information booklet for the citizenship test, which opens its section on ‘Australia’s identity’ with ‘Sport and recreation’, stating that: Many Australians love sport and many have achieved impressive results at an international level. We are proud of our reputation as a nation of ‘good sports’. Australian sportsmen and women are admired as ambassadors for the values of hard work, fair play and teamwork. Throughout our history, sport has both characterised the Australian people and united us. From early settlement, sport provided an escape from the realities of a harsh existence. Even during wartime, members of the Australian Defence Force organised sporting competitions to help relieve the stress of the battleground. Sport also provides a common ground that allows both players and spectators to feel included and a part of something that is important to Australian society (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013: 43). While such pronouncements may be seen as unremarkable and even bland, they can be contentious, as is illustrated by the political controversy over a sample question about the cricketer Sir Donald Bradman (“Name Australia’s greatest cricketer of the 1930s?”) in Becoming an Australian Citizen (Commonwealth of Australia, 2007), the version of this document that was issued under the Howard Coalition Government.2 Although the sample question was deleted by the succeeding Rudd Labor Government (Ryan, 2011), Bradman is still featured in the non-testable part of the later booklet, with a dedicated breakout section describing him as “an Australian sporting legend” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013: 44), while sport retains its pride of place as a foregrounded feature of Australian identity. Of course, Australia is not the only country that relates sport explicitly to citizenship. For example, the study guide for Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship (Canadian Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, 2012: 26, 39) also describes under ‘Arts and Culture in Canada’ and ‘Canadian Symbols’ the popularity of sport and of some sports people. But it is notable that it follows literature, visual arts, performing arts, film, and television in the case of the former, and, among others, ‘Parliament Buildings’ in the case of the latter. In Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond, ‘Sport and recreation’ precedes ‘The Arts’ and ‘Scientific invention and achievement’, while Discover Canada makes no comparable claim definitively connecting sport to Canadian national identity. Life in the United